![\"Maggie](\"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/files\/2014\/07\/Maggie-2-300x175.jpg\")
<\/a>Upon first examining the book from the Watkinson collection, I amazed by the appearance of the book.\u00a0 For a children\u2019s book that was published in the 1880\u2019s, it appears to be in good condition, though it certainly shows evidence of being used in the past and likely by children.\u00a0 This primer is apparently an 1800 version of the cloth or plastic or hard cardboard books we now produce for young children as the publisher claims, on the cover, that this particular book is the \u201cindestructible edition.\u201d\u00a0 The book itself appears to be made of a hard cardboard, and the spine is cloth-covered.\u00a0 The pages of the book are made of linen, and it appears to have been well-read as there is light staining along the outer edges of all of the pages, indicating use.\u00a0 The front cover is brightly colored, with an illustration of a young boy and girl under an umbrella.\u00a0 The title of the book is in an engaging font (one that would appeal to children) which is staggered a bit across the front.\u00a0 The back cover is a repeating picture of frolicking children.\u00a0 There is a good deal of wear on the corners of the book, front and back.\u00a0 The last page of the book shows a good deal of wear and, like the first page, is affixed to the inside cover.<\/p>\nThe text itself boasts that it includes over 200 illustrations.\u00a0 The book is clearly intended to teach the alphabet (both the Roman letters and script) and the numbers one through twelve.\u00a0 As the text introduces each letter, there are a series of pictures of items or animals that begin with that letter.\u00a0 For each letter, there are six or seven words with corresponding pictures.\u00a0 Where I became particularly interested was with the inclusion of some words that seemed strongly based in political or social hierarchy. For example, this book teaches children about words like \u201cearl,\u201d \u201cgun,\u201d \u201cglobe,\u201d \u201cherald,\u201d \u201cking,\u201d and \u201cqueen.\u201d\u00a0 These words clearly denote a particular mindset.\u00a0 While king and queen are probably still in children\u2019s books, the inclusion of a word like \u201cearl\u201d suggests that the word selection was intentionally designed to support the political system of the time.<\/p>\n
The political system (along with the lesson that this text is attempting to inculcate) becomes even more apparent in the section of the text that uses the words in sentences.\u00a0 It becomes clear that the goal of this book is not just to teach the letters and words, but also to help children to understand what is appropriate in society and who has authority.\u00a0 The following sentences, form \u201cG\u201d to \u201cL\u201d indicate the nature of the text: \u201cG was a gypsy who lives in a tent,\u201d \u201cI was an idler and wasted his time,\u201d \u201cJ was a justice who punished all crime,\u201d \u201cK was a knight fully armed cap-a-pie,\u201d and \u201cL was a lawyer and fond of his fee.\u201d\u00a0 What becomes apparent, from these selections and further perusal of the book, is that the children are given a sense of words that begin with those letters (further cementing the lesson of the earlier part of the text), but there is also more direct instruction for the children about appropriate and inappropriate behaviors (i.e,. the idler and gypsy are clearly not favored by society). \u00a0The illustration of the gypsy shows a woman with a small baby strapped to her back, standing in front of a dilapidated tent. \u00a0But the book also casts dispersion on the lawyer, who seems only interested in money, unlike the justice that is referred to earlier.<\/p>\n
The numbers, in contrast to the letters, do not appear to present the same sort of lesson.\u00a0 Instead, the numbers simply reference elements one might find in the natural world, such as \u201cOne Hare,\u201d \u201cFive Fowls,\u201d and \u201cTen Sheep.\u201d\u00a0 The book also contains a seek and find picture, in which the child is supposed to find a horse, boy, girl, and tree.\u00a0 However, the images are quite easy to find, likely because this book was intended for a young child (a pre-reader).<\/p>\n
I found this text particularly interesting to examine, as I felt like I was taking a step back into history and was able to get a sense of the kinds of instructional materials available for young children.\u00a0 Certainly, the text gave me a sense of what adults found was important for children to know.\u00a0 I also think the publisher might be right; this apparently was an \u201cindestructible edition.\u201d\u00a0 As a book for children, it appears to have withstood a good deal of use.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[Posted by Margaret Pallis for AMST 851: The World of Rare Books (Instructor: Richard Ring)] The item in the Watkinson that caught my attention was a primer from circa 1880.\u00a0 The text, Little Birdie\u2019s Picture Primer, was published by George Routledge and Sons.\u00a0 The book appealed to me because I\u2019ve been interested in literature written […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":575,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571\/revisions\/575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Maggie](\"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/files\/2014\/07\/Maggie-1.jpg\")
<\/a>The item in the Watkinson that caught my attention was a primer from circa 1880.\u00a0 The text, Little Birdie\u2019s Picture Primer,<\/i> was published by George Routledge and Sons.\u00a0 The book appealed to me because I\u2019ve been interested in literature written for children for quite a while now.\u00a0 The book also relates, tangentially, to my thesis (which I am in the process of writing) on children\u2019s fiction of this era.\u00a0 In my thesis, I am examining the didacticism inherent in literature written for children and, more specifically, how some particular texts written in the mid-19th<\/sup> to mid-20th<\/sup> century can impact children\u2019s lives.\u00a0 It is possible to suggest that a text like Little Birdie\u2019s Picture Primer<\/i> was designed specifically to mold children in very specific ways.\u00a0 Consequently, when I was looking through the extensive collection that the Watkinson contains, I became interested in the primers.\u00a0 I wanted to see if these books, which are highly didactic in nature, as they were used to teach children to read and write also had a more social or political stance as well.<\/p>\n